Tuesday, 8 July 2008

Please see the Overview Article for all articles in the series "Tracking: European Elections 2009".

For the most recent articles, please check the "Special Feature: Road to the European elections 2009" section in the sidebar!------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Next year, from 4 June to 7 June 2009 there will be the next elections to the European Parliament, no matter if the Lisbon Treaty will be ratified or not.

From today until June 2009, I will keep track of the political preparations for this huge transnational electoral process involving 27 member states of the European Union.

So far, the European parties represented in the Parliament are showing quite different stages of preparation with regard to their public websites' frontpages:

The European Liberal Democrats (ELDR) have no reference to the upcoming elections. In fact, on their frontpage we can still find the link to their 2004 manifesto.

Looking at the European Greens, we can only find a press release from April 2008 on the very bottom of the page. It is stating that the "European Greens Council makes great progress on preparation of 2009 European Parliament election campaign". (The release is likely to disappear in the near future.)

I am aware that frontpages are not the only measures for party activities. However, (not) putting up an issue like the EP elections is a quite good sign of how far the preparations have gone so far. And for now, eleven month before the elections, only the Socialists seem to be ready to inform and involve the public.

Hi JulienVery interesting blog! I'll definitely keep an eye on it! However,I would add that (not) putting up an issue like the EP elections on the parties' frontpages is also quite a good sign of the LACK OF TRANSPARENCY of most of the European parties in their preparation of the elections!

The question is, whether there is a difference to national elections. And the second question is, whether on a national level, where most of the campaigns for the EP elections are planned and organised, there is more transparency.